I was turned onto SW by some random poster at RPG.net a few years back. A glance through the rules told me a I had hit gold. It is hard to recall, but I believe reading the Test Drive rules helped sell the full rules. The EE edition a few years later sold the system to the hard-to-convince crowd on our group.

See folks... if you read a book, ANY book (fiction, non, etc...) and you like it, try and contact the author and thank them for it. You never know what you might learn, not to mention that they probably enjoy the fanmail from time to time.

When the original Deadlands came out, I was so blown away by it that I did something I had never done before- I wrote the company and told them I loved the game. Imagine my suprise when a letter arrived from Michelle Hensley, thanking me and sending along a list of upcoming products. From there, I was a Pinnacle devotee.

So, when Savage Worlds was first announced and they had their big premiere sale where you could buy the book, dice and a ceramic head of Smilin' Jack as a package deal, I nabbed it. Interestingly, I put the book on a shelf and didn't pull it out for about a year because I was in the middle of running a Star Wars game. That game became bogged down due to escalating hit points, levels and endless feats so I turned to the game that was supposed to be a lighter, faster alternative to D20- Savage Worlds.

That conversion met with harsh criticism from my players but that's my fault, not the system. A couple of years later, I managed to get my group to give it another try with some playtests we were doing for 12 to Midnight. Everyone loved it. From there, I ran Rippers and now SW is my group's favorite game.

So my longwinded answer is I bought the core book. At the time, there was no setting yet. But I got that cool Smilin' Jack head and one of my players recently got a tattoo of Smilin' Jack on his arm (he plans on wearing a sleeveless shirt to GenCon to show it off).

tylermo is a rabid fan of SW and he bought my first book. I obtained the rest of my books at conventions as prizes. Many of my other gamer friends do not like Savage Worlds. I do because it is so easy to run, play, and make new exciting characters. I still play D & D but not looking forward to running it(4e). I am working on a Homebrew campaign (Savage Joe) and I can safely say that I will not be working on any d20 stuff at all.

I was a diehard Classic Deadlands afficionado who could not believe the company had abandonned their flagship product for this Savage Worlds hoopla... then I finally broke down and downloaded the test drive rules and realized, ya know, this could actually work!
And of course, Smilin' Jack started whispering to me...

SteveN_________________"We've got a blind date with destiny... and it looks like she's ordered the lobster." <The Shoveller>

I think it may have been Wandering Monster that got me into it, but I'm not sure. A friend gave me his copy of the hardback at GenCon '06, and I've been savage ever since.

What hooked me was the ease of prep. I've written quite a few things for d20, and it's a painful process. (props to d20; its a great system with huge possibilities, but God bless it, it takes forever to make NPC's.) I never ran a d20 campaign, because it was just too daunting. I'm now in my second SW campaign, and I love it._________________My online portfolio:

I got into Savage Worlds through Pirates of the Spanish Main, though I had played Deadlands Classic (original and Hell on Earth) before that - and I'd actually used the Deadlands system and a variant on "Brave New World" as "quasi-generic" systems to run games in settings far apart from the official Deadlands universe. (E.g., settings with supernatural and quasi-historical elements in separate games set in the 1910s, 1920s, and 1930s, and a supernatural/horror campaign with a facade of "superheroic" trappings sometime in the dystopian "near future.")_________________

i heard about Sav Worlds on a ton of threads on RPG.net a few years ago. i downloaded the Test Drive a couple of years ago and began to swipe things from SavageHeroes.
the whole Shaken in combat seemed intimidating at first. most of my gaming background was with games using Hit Points, not wound systems.

soon after, Sav Worlds got put on the side because of my love of D6 which i was going to use for my modern and futuristic games.

i finally got tired of dealing with trying to convert things to D6 for my non-fantasy games.
it just got to be too much work, especially with the different versions of D6, including the current versions advantages, disadvantages, and powers systems which i loathed. i don't think i will ever use D6 again, not even for my beloved Star Wars D6.

late last year i said to Hell with it and ordered the Explorers Edition.

this is all we've played since then.

since then i've gotten the Pulp Toolkits, Pirates of the Spanish Main, and Tour of Darkness.
soon i'll be getting Solomon Kane, the Horror Toolkits, and quite possibly Sundered Skies.

i fully expect to return to C&C and the recently downloaded Mutant Futures . for a change of pace later this year, but interspersed with those other games will be many Savage Worlds one-shots or return to campaigns.
i love DMing this game. it's not a chore anymore. it's easy and quick and i get to devote more time to the actual plot instead of statting up encounters.
this game is also the most fun i've had and the most i've actively devoted time and energy too since i was fifteen and playing Red Box D&D.

Huh. As far as I can tell, I'm the only one that came to SW through The Great Rail Wars miniatures game. I'd always like the Deadlands setting, and really enjoyed playing Rail Wars at cons. Seriously, conventions are really only there so you can play miniatures game without having to paint anything or fill up your own closets, aren't they?

Any way, when Savage Worlds came out, I eventually got around to it when I realized it was largely the same system as Rail Wars, and haven't really looked back since.

And I'll resist the urge to point out what game I'm still waiting for. I don't think I could take the mockery.

It was in 2001 I was going through a divorce, quite my job, moved back to St. Louis, and did something I had not done in almost 7 years. I went to game convention and what did my eyes spy but Smiling Jack, a small booklet advertisement/catalog/demo adventure for a new game system from some company called Great White Games and headed up by none other then Shane Hensley of DeadLands fame.

After running the Red Swamp demo adventure I was hooked and then had the long wait until I could actully purchase the core book.

Gee I don't remember really. I'm really a Savage Worlds baby as I've only been with the game for like... 3-4 months maybe.

I know I was getting tired of d20 and reaching out for a new system. Along with Burning Wheel and Dogs in the Vineyard, Savage Worlds was one of the systems I came across. But the exact circumstances... a website, suggestion on a message board or review I can't recall. Out of the three, Savage Worlds is really the only one I actually play. The other two, Burning Wheel and Dogs are nice reads for a gamer but I just can't get behind the actual games._________________Maus in the House